Living ‘titles’ for loan at Human Library at PuSh Festival

Mark Leiren-Young, Special To The Sun01.17.2014

The Human Library is part of the PuSh Festival and offers ‘titles’ like Female Heavy Equipment Mechanic, Recovering Hoarder, Gypsy Child, and Ex Con, where people share their stories with ‘borrowers.’ Photo: Tim Matheson.

You’ve heard of talking books? The books in the human library are happy to have a conversation with you, and they’ve all got interesting stories to tell.

The Human Library is a one-on-one experience where people open up and share their stories for 20 minutes at a time as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. And, like in the real library, the books are on loan at no charge.

“It’s an opportunity for people to talk to people who (borrowers) probably would not meet in day-to-day life,” says playwright Dave Deveau, curator of the Human Library. “We function like a regular library. You show up at the VPL, you head up to our circulation desk, you peruse the titles available, you choose one that maybe challenges you, or confuses you, or are deeply curious about. We sign the book out for you with your very own human library card and then you have 20 minutes one-on-one with your book to ask any questions you might have. They’ll tell you the story of how they came to be who they are, and at the end of those 20 minutes you move on, hopefully a better person.”

The concept originated in Copenhagen in 2000 in response to a hate crime and the phenomenon has spread around the world.

PuSh first presented a human library in 2013 as a one-time event, but after turning away hundreds of would-be “borrowers” Deveau convinced PuSh and the VPL to bring it back.

“It’s ... bigger and busier. We’ve extended the hours, we’ve extended how many ‘books’ are in the project.”

Part of Deveau’s job is working with the “books” to craft a 10-minute narrative about their lives, which leaves another 10 minutes for questions. But each experience is determined by the “reader.”

Says Deveau, “Some readers come in because they have a question they’ve always wanted answered and they come in with bit of an agenda … and we definitely do have readers who check out books who just sit there, they don’t say a word and they let the book talk for 20 minutes. That’s OK too.”

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